This Band comes to us through our partnership with Ruby Music. The Battles Of Winter single, ‘A Blackout For The Bloodsuckers’ was just released this past week, it’s a big sound, one of those wall of guitars coming at you , making you forget where you are as you get lost in some wicked cool noise, they’ve had their sound compared to Interpol, Echo & The Bunnymen, The National and The Doors . The Battles Of Winter are going to be one of those bands that you can tell your kids, you read about them 1st at 50thirdand3rd.
Hi our name is…. The Battles Of Winter
And our sound might be best described as….I always struggle with this question, usually opting for ‘noisy indie’ but I suppose that’s a bit lazy. I think we have one foot firmly in a Joy Division post punk camp but then I always hope a little Nick Cave-ishness or Echo and the Bunnymen comes through as well. A friend of ours recently said we remind him of Mansun.
We are… Alistair Gale, Graeme Dinning, Lucas Manley and Martin Good
We are originally from….. all over southern England, but we came together in London and that remains our base despite me being the only one that still lives here. The others having moved out of the city.
The first time we met was….. well, myself, Graeme and Lucas met whilst working for a publishing company a few years ago. Although Graeme will tell you he thought I was a dick when he first met me (not uncommon), we quickly became friends thanks in some part to a shared love of Mercury Rev’s Deserters Songs. He introduced me to a lot of new music (he still does). It was on hearing the White Stripes album De Stijl (which Graeme had acquired on import) the two of us felt inspired to start a band, even though Graeme didn’t play an instrument, and I had only previously flirted with writing and playing music at that point. Lucas joined later, when one of the original members moved away from London and we became The Battles Of Winter shortly after. Lucas introduced us to Martin, who was brought in at first to temporarily replace the original drummer, but we just clicked and Martin stuck around.
We knew we were going to be a Band when……… The current line-up evolved out of earlier endeavours, but the very first practice with Martin on drums was a game changer for us.
Before starting the band we were employed as……. I like the way this question implies we now have no need of work’s daily grind and can spend all our time creating new music. Alas that is not the case but when three of us met we were doing less than exciting accounting work. We were all just working temps at the time. We all have jobs now, some more numerous than others, to pay the bills and to fund the band. Within our ranks we have a producer, a taxi driver, a project manager, a paint specialist and fireman.
The first song we wrote was……. called Lab Dreams and as I recall Graeme wrote the lyrics on a train journey through South East London, listening to Godspeed You Black Emperor. Numbers Are Just Shorthand and I Became A Station have been around for a while, though both have changed quite a lot over that time.
It’s about………. sorry, but I don’t really know. Graeme writes the majority of the lyrics and it’s rare that we ask him what they mean. I mostly prefer to leave them to interpretation. We’d prefer you do as well.
What we are currently listening to…. We have fairly varied music tastes between us, though as it turns out we all have a lot of time for The Men. Trying to keep up to speed with new music is really challenging, but that’s what I’m attempting at the moment. Checking out recommendations from trusted sources and going to small gigs. Graeme was recently going on about a band called The World Is A Beautiful Place And I Am No Longer Afraid To Die but he also mentioned they were quite emo which didn’t give me too much incentive to listen to them right away. I also seem to have Marquee Moon on regular repeat lately.
For fun we like to….. bake, put out fires and watch what other bands are doing.
The one thing we want you to remember while you’re listening to us…… that if you get some enjoyment from our music, let us know, but also tell your friends. Come and see us play too. And you can’t climb a ladder with a bell in both hands.
Expect….. our debut album, more live shows, hopefully some festivals and maybe even a TBOW mouse mat. We’re really keen to get back in the studio to record new songs as well. From us in 2014.
